‘Huh? What's that.’
‘Who is she?’
The cadets loosening up on the drill grounds tilted their heads.
The complement was five, yet some female cadet in gym clothes was approaching hesitantly.
“Baek Yu-yeon?”
Cha Yu-sik frowned.
No cadet of the Academy could fail to know her.
The walking encyclopedia and prodigy of martial medicine.
Thanks to her neat looks she was popular as well.
You could gauge it simply from the fact that Hwang Min-woo, heir to a near-conglomerate, had chased her so doggedly.
“Ahem, ahem!”
Spotting Baek Yu-yeon, Gwak Do-jin cleared his throat and looked up at the platform.
Sitting there sipping whiskey from the morning was Kang Hyeon.
‘Did you see, Professor? I've gone and done it! I brought her!’
The way he squared his shoulders and sent that look was for all the world a faithful hound waiting for its master's praise.
But Kang Hyeon's reaction was lukewarm.
Not because of Gwak Do-jin's persuasion — because he knew perfectly well that she had taken the bait he cast yesterday and come of her own accord.
“You're here? Get ready, then.”
“Yes, Professor!”
At the ringing answer, the five cadets fell into formation in perfect order.
There was not a trace of awkwardness in it.
“Today we start with the Three Powers Sword Art, Earth. One thousand swings.”
“Yes!”
Chaaat!
Five wooden swords cut the air as one.
A slash extending straight out along the horizontal.
And at the end of that arc, the sword halting with weight, as though bearing up a vast boulder.
The holding movement that gives form to the solidity of the earth.
Standing there blankly, Baek Yu-yeon held her breath at the overwhelming force of it.
‘That is...... the Three Powers Sword Art?’
She was a third-year cadet, for all that; there was no chance she did not know the Three Powers Sword Art.
Bring it down, hold, thrust.
In the modern day it was the most commonplace junk technique going, known even to neighborhood children.
And yet it looked like a technique she was seeing for the first time.
A flawless ensemble she could not take her eyes off!
Even the stride length, the direction, the angle of the blades were knife-precise.
That alone was astonishing, and with her Heavenly Meridian Eye she saw more than that.
‘The qi coming out of the qi center runs through the lower body, up the waist, past the shoulder to the tip of the sword...... and it's being delivered with almost no loss.’
What about ordinary cadets?
Nine times out of ten the energy would scatter partway.
Unnecessary strength going into the shoulder, or the lower body's center wavering minutely — there would be all sorts of reasons.
Draw up a hundred of energy, and would even thirty be riding on the blade's tip?
All at once, Baek Yu-yeon's skin prickled.
This was something only she could see.
Because she had the special ability to see the qi flowing in the meridians with her own eyes.
So she had occasionally offered advice to peers and juniors out of a sense of pity.
That rather than blindly hauling up stronger energy, it would be better to make the foundations solid so nothing leaked out of the qi and blood.
Not that they listened, of course.
The trouble was that the professors were the same.
Baek Yu-yeon could plainly see the cadets' energy leaking away in gaps along the route, yet the professors, looking only at the flashy destructive power on display, would applaud and call it perfect.
And yet.
‘Those five have almost no leakage in their qi and blood.’
She did not have to ask why.
It would be thanks to Professor Kang Hyeon.
In which case, could Professor Kang Hyeon see the flow of qi as she could?
Was that why he was able to give them guidance like this?
“You there.”
Presently Kang Hyeon's cold voice rang out.
“What are you standing there in a daze for.”
“......Sorry?”
“Didn't you come out to take part in the class? Come here.”
“Yes!”
Baek Yu-yeon trotted over.
Inwardly, she was full of expectation.
Was he finally going to explain in detail the principle behind that alchemy method, the leaving of the lid open?
Or perhaps......!
He had been scanning the martial medicine section at the Archive — surely he hadn't mastered that field as well?
To her, coming up with shining eyes, Kang Hyeon tossed out.
“Take your stance.”
“What stance?”
“Spread your feet wider than shoulder width and bend your knees. Until your thighs are level with the ground. Back straight, eyes front.”
“......The horse stance?”
“Are your ears blocked, by any chance?”
“N-No, sir!”
Flustered, she bent her knees.
The beginning of hell training.
***
Three hours later.
“Hgk, haaah!”
Thump!
Baek Yu-yeon sank straight down onto the ground.
Her neatly tied hair had come apart entirely, and her gym clothes were soaked through with sweat like a drowned rat's.
From thigh to calf, everything spasmed madly as though it belonged to somebody else.
‘I'm going to die.’
Honestly, over those three hours she had wanted to give up dozens of times.
She was a martial medicine major, a non-combatant, for goodness' sake.
She had even resented whatever thinking had called someone like her out and put her through a horse stance of impossible intensity.
But in the end she did not give up.
Because every time her legs gave out and she was about to sink down, Kang Hyeon appeared at her side like a ghost and whispered.
- Aren't you curious how I knew that alchemy method yesterday?
- Give up if you want to. Only, you may never get to hear the answer you'd rack your brains over for the rest of your life.
It was the devil's whisper and nothing less.
She was indignant and aggrieved, but she was desperate, so she endured.
“Hey, Baek Yu-yeon. Are you all right?”
Gwak Do-jin came over and held out a hand, but.
Tok.
Baek Yu-yeon knocked it lightly aside.
“Do I look all right?”
Senior Gwak was the worst of them.
Introducing a hellhole like this as morning exercise without a single word of warning?
What? It wouldn't get in the way of her schedule?
She was not going to make it to the Archive, let alone her classes!
“Krrgh!”
Hauling her trembling legs up by force, Baek Yu-yeon headed straight for the platform.
He had threatened her not to give up, and she had not given up, so it was time to hear the answer.
“Professor!”
“Good eyes. Bite I like very much.”
“Now tell me! That alchemy method from yesterday! How on earth did you know it? There wasn't one line about that process in the books I read!”
“Well, fine. A promise is a promise.”
Kang Hyeon sloshed the half-empty whiskey bottle.
“Five volumes.”
“Sorry?”
“The books you had spread on the desk yesterday. They're manuals that are only completed when five come together in the first place.”
“......!”
Baek Yu-yeon took a shock like a blow to the head from a blunt instrument.
‘Five volumes!’
The truth was she too had felt the wrongness for days on end.
The uneasiness of something that ought to interlock logically but had, oddly, one cog missing.
She had been in the middle of merely suspecting there might be a hidden process or another text she did not know about.
And now that suspicion had been confirmed as fact, exactly!
“Th-Then.”
Urgent now, Baek Yu-yeon took another step forward.
“What's the remaining volume?”
“Where's the fun in telling you all of it?”
“......Sorry?”
A mischievous smile hung at the corner of Kang Hyeon's mouth.
“One question a day. Come to tomorrow's class as well if you're curious.”
“Sorry?”
“Are your ears blocked, by any chance?”
“It's less my ears than my patience!”
She had to sit through this hellish class again?
In the end Baek Yu-yeon put her aggrieved question.
“Why on earth take a martial medicine major and put her through physical training?”
“In that case, why should I give instruction to a cadet who doesn't even attend my class?”
“......Th-That's low.”
“Turns out there's nothing free in this world.”
Since even the state had genuinely stopped paying for his drink.
He was going to have to start earning money soon.
“In exchange, I'll promise you one thing.”
Kang Hyeon's eyes settled for an instant.
“For the weight of every drop of sweat you shed on these drill grounds, I will never give a light answer to any question of yours.”
***
In the end, the next day too Baek Yu-yeon had to taste hell.
“Hgk, hah......!”
It felt as though her soul were leaving her body, but she gritted her teeth and held on.
Because she had to hear the answer.
“Th-That book! What's it called?”
Swallowing a mouthful of whiskey, Kang Hyeon answered indifferently.
“The Origin-Stabilizing Formula.”
“The Origin-Stabilizing Formula......!”
She could not go on to ask what kind of book it was.
Because that would use up her question.
“Thank you!”
The moment she heard the answer, Baek Yu-yeon dragged her shaking legs to the Martial Learning Archive.
But search every corner of it as she might, no manual called the Origin-Stabilizing Formula existed.
It was not on AcaNet, and it did not come up on the manual information sites.
Then she finally found it in a corner of the Chinese-language global web.
‘It's plainly right here?’
What was more, in China, exactly as Kang Hyeon had said, the five books including the Origin-Stabilizing Formula were sold bundled together as a single set called the Five Principles of Basic Alchemy.
‘Ah.’
This was it.
The reason China could not help but reign as the world's Hunter superpower.
We have to go through interpretation even when we obtain a manual; they are natively connected to the linguistic root.
Taking in the archaic language comes more easily to them, too.
In any case.
‘So I have to obtain that book, then......’
Trade in secret manuals is normally controlled rigorously at the national level.
Getting an alchemy manual from abroad as a private individual, especially, was like plucking a star from the sky.
Just as she was at a loss, Kang Hyeon's words came back to her.
- For the weight of every drop of sweat you shed on these drill grounds, I will never give a light answer to any question of yours.
Then......
Would he know the contents of the Origin-Stabilizing Formula as well?
“Aah.”
All at once she lamented.
Was the reality not that she had no choice but to go out again tomorrow?
She was already addicted.
The next day, the moment training ended, she asked Kang Hyeon point-blank.
“Professor! Could you not obtain that book for me?”
“Hm, is that your question?”
“N-No! Wait a moment!”
She flailed about as though he had said something horrifying.
If that became the question?
It would end at yes, or no!
She had to ask differently.
“Teach me the contents of that book!”
Watching Baek Yu-yeon ask through gasping breaths, the corner of Kang Hyeon's mouth traced a curve.
“I knew you'd come out that way.”
“Sorry?”
Slip.
Kang Hyeon slid a hand into the inside pocket of his coat.
And drew out a thick notebook, which he tossed into her arms.
《The Origin-Stabilizing Formula》
“Hgk?!”
She was genuinely astonished.
How, when she had searched everything and there was not a single page of it in the country?
Opening it, she found a hand-copied transcript written in the archaic language.
She had not the faintest idea that Kang Hyeon had lately been transcribing secret manuals.
“Read it. Only, understanding it is your own affair. Whenever you need it explained, attend my class and ask. A word of advice — you'd do better not to go to another interpreter.”
“You'll explain the archaic language as well?”
“I told you, didn't I? If it's a question, I'll answer.”
“......Why are you going this far for me?”
Thinking about it, ever since the contract business she had had the sense of a professor quietly watching her back.
Rather like a parent silently cheering from behind.
“Why am I good to you?”
“......Yes.”
“Just remember one thing.”
“Which thing?”
“There is nothing free in this world.”
For now, know only that much.
Because later you may have to walk a horrific road, one on which you face a Demon God.